Fines Mount Higher as More Sanctions Levied on League of Legends Team Counter Logic Gaming for Poaching Scandal
Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) is a team synonymous with League of Legends, having stayed relevant under the spotlight of North American League of Legends (LoL) since Season 1. However, they’re also quickly becoming synonymous with controversy off the Rift, as the latest in a series of fines against the organization just hit, with CLG being found guilty of poaching Darshan “ZionSpartan” Upadhyaya.
Investigations revealed that CLG’s Attack Damage (AD) carry, Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng, approached ZionSpartan and encouraged him to join CLG for the next season. This happened while Zion was still on the Dignitas roster, and thus was in clear violation of the League Challenger Series (LCS) rule set.
The CLG organization has been fined $2500 for this infraction while Doublelift specifically was fined $2000. In addition, CLG is forbidden to use ZionSpartan for the first week of the 2015 LCS Spring Split.
While this would already be an increasingly complicated situation for CLG, not only for their organization’s credibility but also with the loss of their complete squad, this wasn’t the only penalty levied against them. In August 2014, several of its members were found to be participating in account sharing while in their boot camp in Korea. These members were fined individually on top of their being banned from any Korean eSports Association (KeSPA) affiliated tournament for a period of two years.
CLG was also fined a whopping $10,000 just last month for its poaching of William “Scarra” Li, also the former head coach of Dignitas, when he was also listed as a substitute player. In addition, CLG is disallowed from using Scarra as a coach or player for their squad for the first three weeks of the LCS. CLG owner and former top laner George “HotshotGG” Georgallidis formally addressed the incident involving Scarra, claiming that it was his oversight and that this sort of violation would not happen again.
This was most likely what led the organization to come forward with the circumstances surrounding ZionSpartan’s recruitment. This factor weighed in heavily in Riot’s decision making and is the leading cause for the penalties in this instance being much lighter than they were for the Scarra case.
This succession of penalties has been weighing heavily on one of the most popular franchises in LoL history. After a less than graceful end to their Season 4 run, with team member and coaching issues bleeding into their gameplay, CLG’s momentum coming into Season 5 may be severely hampered because of these issues off the Rift.
As it stands, CLG will have to make do and live with the decisions they and their players have made as they go into the LCS without their full roster and staff.
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